Shatner has been in as many Trek movies as Connery was in Bond movies. And that's not counting three seasons of TOS. That's a good long run, I think, and more than enough for anyone.

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THIS.

It's way past time for everybody to accept Chris Pine as Kirk (along with Brian Goss from Star Trek Phase II).

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While I like Pine as Kirk just fine, and while I agree that bringing back Shatner for the movie to play Kirk one more time really isn't necessary*, why don't we let people decide for themselves what or whom they'll accept and when? Wagging a figurative finger at people while telling them what it's time for them to accept is probably not going to be very productive (not to mention that it has a way of making one come across as a scold.)

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground? They had warp engines that spat rocket exhaust, even though GR explicitly reiterated that Warp Drive did not run on exhaust propulsion principles and that the E was so big (and so unfit for atmospheric flight) that she spent her entire life--birth to death--in space (and her one blue sky adventure, "Tommorow Is Yeterday," saw her compromised by atmospheric flight she stumbled into)? This mega-ship doubles as the frakking SeaView! Hell, they couldn't even leave Sam Kirk Sam Kirk in the final cut, he became Johnny and Jim implicitly an only child. (Lucas-Cambellian monomyth heroes--of which Kirk was never one--only have siblings they open-mouth kiss... and that's a ret-con only because Lucas couldn't be bothered with resolving a real love triangle.)

Writer "intent" be damned (hence the term fig leaf), these guys remade Trek in their image. I like it but it is more believably an extension of Gold Key comics, Peter Pan story records and Mego playsets than the show that ran on NBC from 1967 to 1969. Spocktimus Prime doesn't change that.

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

Sure it does. What they did--the liberties they took, the changes they made--trumps what they say they intened. I doubt Abrams, who never much liked Trek to begin with, cared either way.

I have no problem with reboots: I love that there are myriad Batmen and James Bonds. I just wish Trek had owned it rather than try to provide a ricketty and unconvincing bridge back to TOS. And I really wish it had ignored ENT entirely. We can't get a "Hey, Sam!" as Kirk speeds along but we can get Admiral Archer's prize beagle? I prefer my easter eggs not smell of sulphur.

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

Brutal Strudel said:

So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground?

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How can they have the resources to build a ship in space yet not on the ground?

Brutal Strudel said:

What they did--the liberties they took, the changes they made--trumps what they say they intened.

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Yet there is no essential conflict between these things, so there is no need for anything to be trumped, unless it is to say that the intent of the film creators trumps spin generated by random people on the internet. They made no changes which cannot be explained by the divergence of the timeline, outside of cosmetic stuff that really wasn't intended to be overinterpreted and which occurred in a previously unexplored year of the timeline anyway.

Brutal Strudel said:

I doubt Abrams, who never much liked Trek to begin with, cared either way.

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It's a free country; you're allowed to speculate. But it isn't really worth very much.

So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground?

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In "Parallels", we see a Galaxy-class ship being built on the surface of Mars.

They had warp engines that spat rocket exhaust, even though GR explicitly reiterated that Warp Drive did not run on exhaust propulsion principles and that the E was so big (and so unfit for atmospheric flight) that she spent her entire life--birth to death--in space (and her one blue sky adventure, "Tommorow Is Yeterday," saw her compromised by atmospheric flight she stumbled into)?

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So what are the red streaks zooming from the rear of the nacelles in movies II-VI? And the Enterprise NX-01 flying over NYC?

This mega-ship doubles as the frakking SeaView! Hell, they couldn't even leave Sam Kirk Sam Kirk in the final cut, he became Johnny and Jim implicitly an only child. (Lucas-Cambellian monomyth heroes--of which Kirk was never one--only have siblings they open-mouth kiss... and that's a ret-con only because Lucas couldn't be bothered with resolving a real love triangle.)

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Underwater ships we've seen before in Trek (Insurrection), as well as ships swimming through giant Space Amoebas and endless other ridiculous stuff. And Scotty even points out "how ridiculous it is to hide a starship at the bottom of the ocean"

Writer "intent" be damned (hence the term fig leaf), these guys remade Trek in their image. I like it but it is more believably an extension of Gold Key comics, Peter Pan story records and Mego playsets than the show that ran on NBC from 1967 to 1969. Spocktimus Prime doesn't change that.

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As happened in TMP, TWoK, TNG and ENT. Seriously, have you tried to compare TOS and TMP or WoK? It's like entirely different universes. The ship couldn't look more different in TMP, and then by WoK somehow technology has gone from showers which beam clothing onto the occupant to torpedoes having to be manually loaded. Not to mention, Khan and his followers changing radically in what was supposed to be a direct sequel to an old episode.

It's all happened before and will all happen again next iteration of Trek. Just because technical manuals and chronologies and novels gloss over the big changes in direction for Trek doesn't mean they're not there staring you right in the face. Trek's continuity is complete illusion. That someone will suspend disbelief for everything up until the latest round of changes seems rather ridiculous. Of course it's a reboot, but since we pretended the last half dozen were part of a continuous universe, I don't see what has to change now.

How is it that an organization which had multiple starbases all over the place in the 2260s is imagined to not have the "resources" to build a ship of "Galaxy class" size, on the ground or otherwise? How does that make sense?

( And yes, by all means let's refer to the real world, in which spaceships built on the ground somehow make it into orbit! )

So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground? They had warp engines that spat rocket exhaust, even though GR explicitly reiterated that Warp Drive did not run on exhaust propulsion principles and that the E was so big (and so unfit for atmospheric flight) that she spent her entire life--birth to death--in space (and her one blue sky adventure, "Tommorow Is Yeterday," saw her compromised by atmospheric flight she stumbled into)?

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Compromised by the atmospheric flight itself, though, or compromised by the black star/full reverse warp/rubber band-snap chain of events (stumble) which placed the E in the atmosphere?

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

Good question. From their desperation to climb, I figured it was the E needed to attain orbit to fly comfortably. However, they also were desperate not to be detected so...

Since every thing I'd read from the production/creative end was adamant that the Enterprise was not designed for atmospheric flight--since Matt Jeffries designed her specifically suggest she was a creature of the void (sorry--the beautiful girl brings out the bad poet in me*), maybe I'm just projecting an assumption.

*True Story: I once texted "Never lose you" to a Star Trek-hating woman--sans attribution, of course.

So in the Prime Universe, they had the resources to build a Galaxy Class-sized ship on the ground?

Click to expand...

In "Parallels", we see a Galaxy-class ship being built on the surface of Mars.

They had warp engines that spat rocket exhaust, even though GR explicitly reiterated that Warp Drive did not run on exhaust propulsion principles and that the E was so big (and so unfit for atmospheric flight) that she spent her entire life--birth to death--in space (and her one blue sky adventure, "Tommorow Is Yeterday," saw her compromised by atmospheric flight she stumbled into)?

Click to expand...

So what are the red streaks zooming from the rear of the nacelles in movies II-VI? And the Enterprise NX-01 flying over NYC?

Underwater ships we've seen before in Trek (Insurrection), as well as ships swimming through giant Space Amoebas and endless other ridiculous stuff. And Scotty even points out "how ridiculous it is to hide a starship at the bottom of the ocean"

Writer "intent" be damned (hence the term fig leaf), these guys remade Trek in their image. I like it but it is more believably an extension of Gold Key comics, Peter Pan story records and Mego playsets than the show that ran on NBC from 1967 to 1969. Spocktimus Prime doesn't change that.

Click to expand...

As happened in TMP, TWoK, TNG and ENT. Seriously, have you tried to compare TOS and TMP or WoK? It's like entirely different universes. The ship couldn't look more different in TMP, and then by WoK somehow technology has gone from showers which beam clothing onto the occupant to torpedoes having to be manually loaded. Not to mention, Khan and his followers changing radically in what was supposed to be a direct sequel to an old episode.

It's all happened before and will all happen again next iteration of Trek. Just because technical manuals and chronologies and novels gloss over the big changes in direction for Trek doesn't mean they're not there staring you right in the face. Trek's continuity is complete illusion. That someone will suspend disbelief for everything up until the latest round of changes seems rather ridiculous. Of course it's a reboot, but since we pretended the last half dozen were part of a continuous universe, I don't see what has to change now.

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1. We see components of Galaxy class ships, a hundred years post TOS, with a hundred years worth of advances in tech from over a thousand worlds, on the ground of a planet with far less gravity than earth, roughly one third. Those components--saucers, if I recall--could well be awaiting lift-off, like modules of the ISS, to be joined with star drives in orbit. And if there were star drives in the picture, the saucers were not sitting atop them. So you have the mass of a Galaxy Class ship roughly halved, awaiting lift-off in 1/3 Iowa's gravity, to be assembled in space. Besides, I believe Probert said they were test modules, never intended to see actual flight, kinda like the shuttle Enterprise.

2. The ENTIRE ship streaks--it's a representation of the Doppler shift. The E-D rubber-banded. No exhaust, just a poetic representation of what FTL might look like to an observer. As far as ENT goes? F*ck ENT.

3. I doubt the Space Amoeba had the pressure or gravity found at the bottom of a Class M planet's ocean.

4. TMP and TWoK as reboots? Partial reboots, maybe--but then TOS rebooted from episode to episode, by that logic. (To use the Bond analogy, Lazenby is the same Bond as Connery, as evidenced by his handling Connery's mementos in OHMSS--he reverts to Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. And since Moore was Connery's contemperorary, we can assume it was the same Bond through A View to a Kill. Dalton was a partial reboot, Brosnan and Craig radical and complete reboots, despite Judy Dench being M in all their films. And, God help us, we're supposed to buy that Keaton, Kilmer and Clooney are all the same Batman. But they surely aren't West. And Bale ain't none of 'em).

But as I said, I'd have preferred an honest reboot to the fig leaf you are defending. The fig leaf is there. Okay. It's "not" a reboot.

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

1. You're using speculation about the limits of Trek technology here. It doesn't fit how you think it should be. Nothing outside your imposed limitations precludes the possibility that they could do it.

2. No, it's bright red booster streaks shooting out the rear of the nacelles, like someone did it with a red marker pen.

4. I still don't see why you can suspend disbelief for what came before but not now. Look at the videos in my sig - why is Voyager's warp 9.975 ridiculously slower than TOS' warp 8.4? Because they moved the goalposts.

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

1. Of course I'm speculating--based on the Writer's Guide and TMoST stating explicitly that the E was built in space and based on Probert's statement. You are speculating based on other things. Oh, and goose? Take a gander:

Re: They really should have found a way to get Shatner on one of the m

1. Making of Star Trek and the writers guides aren't canon. Their speculations (like photon torpedoes being composed of energy) have been superseded. Also, there's nothing to say they're not right and the TOS Enterprise wasn't built in space. The issue is the possibility of building on land.

2. Click! It looks like the Red Arrows putting on a display. There's also Nemesis, which left similar blue trails to the new movie.

3. I must have missed the lessons on miles-long space amoebas which magically suck the life force from people and technology. And what about the times the various Trek ships have endured crushing black holes, freaky anomalies, near collisions with suns etc? H20 has nothing on them.

4. I'm taking the whole lot into account, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. No cherry picking from the bits I like best and insisting they're the only way.

Trek is a goofy comic book world, it just occasionally likes to pretend it's being realistic science fiction. There's more than enough room for all the Abramsverse silliness.